This article originally appeared in print journal Jul/Aug 1999.

Shortly before 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, two teenagers terrorized their fellow students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., south of Denver. Employing a powerful arsenal of bombs and guns in a shocking and grizzly rampage that killed 12 students and a teacher and injured another 23, the two teens’ final act of violence was turning their weapons on themselves.

Soon news helicopters were hovering over the scene, transmitting images of the bedlam outside the school to millions of television viewers. Images of harried students hurriedly fleeing the school were staples of the relentless deluge of media coverage that ensued, as all manner of experts endlessly dissected issues like the alarming growth of rural and suburban school violence, the tragedy of absentee parents, Americans’ easy access to guns, and the dark side of pop culture and the Internet.

That Sunday—April 23—millions more tuned in to watch coverage of a community memorial service attended by an estimated 70,000 people. Amy Grant—one of the event’s several evangelical celebrities—expressed the questions of an entire nation when she sang, “Why, why, why does it go this way?”

But there were no cameras rolling the following evening when hundreds of weary youth workers and other community members gathered at nearby Foothills Community Church for a hastily scheduled meeting of the Southwest Connection, a well-established network of south Denver-area youth pastors and counselors.

The church had recently been the setting for the funeral of Columbine student John Tomlin, and grief and sadness still hung in the air during the Monday evening gathering, where veteran youth workers Rich Van Pelt and Jim Hancock facilitated a special service.

“Before we got underway, a number of people were sitting quietly in the pews or leaning against the church walls alone,” said Hancock. “Some were clearly exhausted. But there weren’t a lot of tears. It was more a sense of numbness.”

Local restaurants donated food for the event, and nearby ministries supplied materials. International Bible Society in Colorado Springs shipped in boxes of Scripture booklets dealing with grief and disaster, while Group Publishing in Loveland supplied books on counseling teens.

The formal program began around 7:15 p.m. with a period of worship and music, then Van Pelt (author of Intensive Care, an acclaimed resource on crisis counseling now out of print) gave a brief and spirited overview of crisis-intervention issues.

But rather than bombarding the youth workers with a ton of facts, Van Pelt emphasized the importance of presence, stressing that the most effective form of ministry in crisis situations doesn’t involve providing neat and tidy theological explanations—but rather being with those who mourn and walking with them as they suffer and grieve.

Said Hancock: “He pointed out that people who survive crises of this magnitude invariably look back and point to one person whom they say was with them all the way through the ordeal.”

Van Pelt peppered his comments with a desperately needed commodity…humor. In fact, the evening was the first time many youth workers had laughed all week.

He also explained another important principle of crisis intervention: People who survive typically have a reason to live. Hancock further explained, “We may not be able to answer everyone’s questions, but each of us can be a person who is with these kids throughout this ordeal. And perhaps through that process, we can model something people who are suffering can come to believe in.”

The evening wound down as Hancock led the group in a period of worship and sharing. “I invited people, as an act of worship, to talk about how Jesus had met them in the valley of the shadow of death during the previous week,” he said.

One by one, evangelical youth pastors, Catholic youth workers employees of Denver-based Youth for Christ, and independent street preachers talked about the crises and consolations of the week.

After this time of sharing, all the youth workers who lived in the community stood as the others laid hands on them and prayed for them.

“There was so much numbness in the room,” Hancock recalled again. “People felt overwhelmed. They’d been forced to deal with things they didn’t understand and never could have predicted.

“It seemed that people were not so much trying to make sense of what had been happening to them all week, but trying to deal with the broken lives all around them, as well as their own brokenness.”

The evening formally ended with brothers Stephen and Jonathan Cohen (and other Columbine students) singing “Friend of Mine,” a prayerful song the Cohen brothers wrote after the tragedy and sang at the beginning of the previous day’s memorial service:

   Turn our pain to your gain

   Keep our hearts on the mark

   Comfort us with your love

   Love again.

Jonathan managed to flee the building while the shooters’ rampage was still in progress, but Stephen—like many other students—was trapped inside a classroom for several hours.

Stephen, the leader of the school’s Bible club, commented that the school had a large, strong Christian fellowship and wondered if God allowed the tragedy to happen there “because we might be strong enough to get through this.”

Many youth workers remained at the church after the service, well past 11 p.m., basking in the evening’s fellowship and security before heading back outside to an uncertain world and the daunting task of continuing to minister to and mend so many young, broken lives.

Hancock—formerly the creative director of the EdgeTV video series before going freelance (his latest book, Raising Adults, will be published by Pinon Press this fall), said he’d wanted to do an episode of the TV series “Kids Killing Kids” which would have included interviews with students who survived the Jonesboro, Ark., shooting.

“I talked to some of the students, and we had agreed that I would contact them later, after they had a chance to heal,” said Hancock. “But their process of grieving was so consuming that when I would call them back, they said they needed more time before they could talk about it.”

Within days after the Columbine tragedy, newspapers and TV programs ran with stories about how healing was beginning to take place—but anyone who’s been close to a tragedy knows that healing can take a very long time.

Or, as one youth worker connected to the Jonesboro shooting told Hancock:

“These things are like earthquakes. At the seismic center, there’s terrible damage and everything is brought down. Further out from the epicenter, things go back to normal in a relatively short time. But for those at the epicenter, our lives are still in ruins.”t